Hear em roar: Couple hope film stirs action on lions

After years making documentary films to educate the West about the need to preserve African wildlife, Beverly and Dereck Joubert are turning their sights on a new target. The South African couples 22 previous films have raised awareness throughout much of the world about the dwindling numbers of lions and other big cats in their natural habitats.

Now they believe they need to broaden their audience to include China.

Leaning over the dashboard of their custom-modified Land Cruiser, Dereck 57, keeps a watchful eye on the six lions in the grass a few feet in front of him.

Weve made a mess of Africas wildlife population. Colonialism brought trophy hunting and today were losing five lions a day to poaching and hunting, he says.

Their work has focused on the steady decline of big cats across the globe. The most recent documentary premiers Dec. 1 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on the cable channel NatGeo Wild.Game of Lions tells the story of a group of young males and the dangers they face as they seek to become the one battle-scarred warrior who will lead the pride. Its part of NatGeos popular Big Cat Week.

The Jouberts have been National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence since 1999. They worry that a rising hunger in China for lion bone wine and exotic animal pelts is adding to the dangers faced by lions.

Africas lion population is already down to 20,000 to 30,000, from as many as a million originally, says Luke Hunter, president of Panthera, a global wild cat conservation organization based in New York.

The main current threat is simply more mouths to feed, Hunter said. Africa has the fastest-growing population on the planet, fueling the need to clear more land for farming, destroying the habitat lions need to survive.

But other dangers loom. For centuries tiger bone wine, made by soaking tiger bones in spirits, has been sold in China and across Asia as an elixir believed to have healing powers and as a male potency enhancer.

Today lion bones have started to replace tiger bones because tigers are being driven to extinction in the wild, says Richard Carroll with the World Wildlife Funds Africa program.

lion cubs playing

Its all bogus, Dereck says. It doesnt do anything except get lions killed.

The bones come mainly from South African lion farms, where the animals are bred to be hunted, said Tico McNutt, director of the Botswana Predator Conservation Trust in Maun, Botswana.

The concern is that bones from wild lions are beginning to enter China and Chinese markets in Asia. Once you have any legal trade, it opens up a whole illegal trade, Carroll says.

The Jouberts say they arent singling out China. Theres no one reason why were losing the animals in Africa, there are many reasons. We cant target one culture, says Beverly, 56.

At the same time, having spent the last 32 years working to change perceptions abut wildlife, they feel the need to reach beyond their current audience. Our long Western documentaries dont work in China, where young people prefer short videos on cellphones, Beverly says.

The couple have signed on with a Hong Kong film production group to find cultural intermediaries who can help them translate their award-winning stories into a message that will resonate with the worlds most populous nation - while not forgetting their American and European audiences.

Their stories about individual animals stir emotions and fertilize empathy in ways that science and scientific understanding cannot, McNutt said.

They certainly look the part to tell those stories. Meeting the Jouberts on a tiny airstrip in Botswana feels like stepping into a Ralph Lauren safari ad. Theyre all bronzed skin, khaki clothes and savanna hats. Except that they are the real thing - having lived in the African bush since 1977.

We both felt wed been born into the wrong era, Beverly says. When Dereck finished his mandatory military service they left Johannesburg to spend a year at a wildlife observation post in South Africa. We wanted to be explorers. It was almost like a gap year, she said, comparing it to the year between high school and college many Europeans take to travel.

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